1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to food serving devices. More particularly, it pertains to an individual food serving plate that is designed to be used by children to facilitate their independent use of utensils.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many parents struggle to get their children to eat independently with utensils. Prior art exists that has special forms of dinnerware that seek to address this problem by either making the dinnerware entertaining or by offering features that interact with utensils. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,938,066 and 4,863,033 disclose food serving plates on which utensils can be mounted; the plates and utensils in these disclosures encourage children to eat by using decorations and/or entertaining toy figures that seek to make eating fun. U.S. Pat. No. 4,986,434 discloses a dish that contains a cavity that helps users load string-form pasta onto a utensil by spinning the utensil within the cavity. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,390,816 and 5,588,551 disclose plates with abutments that are used to force food pushed against the side wall by a utensil onto the utensil. U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,981 discloses a plate hollowed out recess in the bottom that is located at or below the food-receiving surface of the plate and has a lip that overlaps and engages an edge of a utensil, such as a spoon, so that the utensil is retained within the recess and food can be smoothly slid from the plate onto the utensil.
The present invention offers a different solution to get children to eat independently with utensils than that presented by the prior art. The present invention offers features that appeal to children because the features are not only fun, but also because the features interact with utensils to assist children's efforts to load food onto utensils. Additionally, the geometry of the features in the present invention differs from the geometry of the features disclosed in the prior art.
Known prior art includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,863,033; 4,986,434; 5,172,826; 5,390,816; 5,588,551; 5,638,981; and 5,938,066.